U Heard it: Quotable moments from UBTech

U Heard it: Quotable moments from UBTech

“One thing that drives faculty nuts is kids who disrupt the class. If a professor has a student asking too many questions in class, for example, [the student may] need a rule: ‘One question per class, and then see me during office hours.’ Also, show the faculty member the stuff that the student CAN do.” —Temple Grandin, Colorado State University, and author of Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism, during a breakfast with attendees, speaking on helping educators who get frustrated by students differences

“Content has changed. We’re seeing that with the rise of the MOOCs, massively open online courses. Content is free and open and everywhere and is drawn down on a personalized basis. That has massive implications for higher education. If content is commoditized, what’s the value-add that higher education brings?” —Nicole Englebert, Ovum Industry Technologies, in “The Visionary CFO: Using the Best Business Intelligence to Guide Decision Making,” CFO Summit

“Once we realize that websites need to get better, usually one of two things happen. A, you redesign it, or B, you invest in a new CMS. When, in fact, the root of the problem is the management practices behind the website. Yes, you need to think about having good design and a good infrastructure, but you also need to have the processes in place to make sure you’re doing your best work.” —Mark Greenfield, University at Buffalo, in “Managing the Unmanageable: Digital Governance in Higher Education

“Central IT is in a really good spot right now. We have a lot of exciting opportunities coming, and most of all I think it’s going to be user driven. So rather than trying to figure out what enterprise level needs we’re going to need to fill, I think we get to start looking at what users want and come up with. We have this group of thousands of students, faculty, and staff who are going to come up with amazing ideas that they bring to us for help. So things like fun augmented reality apps on campus, or new emerging teaching methods that faculty want to provide for their students. And we get to be their sidekick, we get to be their partner, rather than just administering email and network servers all day long.” —Sarah Smith-Robbins, director of emerging technologies at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, in a UBTech 2012 Up Close Interview

“If you build it, faculty will adopt, right? No. We got some really cool things, but it was a waste of money. It didn’t get used because faculty didn’t want it. It’s really important to find out what your faculty want and not what the world faculty want.” —Casey Foulds, instructional operations system administration at Texas Woman’s University, in “Money Talks: The Cost-Effective Learning Environment,” at the Connected Campus Summit

“While market conditions and technology have changed dramatically in 30 years, the structure of the admissions office and the entering qualifications and roles of admissions counselors have not kept pace. … We as an industry have to rethink the way we staff and structure our offices. We have to give up some things to hopefully accomplish some things.” —John W. Dysart, The Dysart Group, in “Changing the Structure in the Admission Office to Adapt to New Technological Realities”